In the Planning Stages

With everything that has been going on, look, we’ve forgotten all about the suburbs.

Very luckily, l’Express has rediscovered Fadela Amara, who was good for three pages. We hadn’t much noticed that she had disappeared from the landscape. But at least she, anyway, is still conscious of the magnitude of her task; "I manage one of the heaviest portfolios in the government. There is constant pressure. I have a greater obligation to produce results than the other ministers." Ah, yes, the Marshall Plan for the working-class suburbs, the battle against the glandouille [1] It’s been heavy, very heavy.

No results to date, that’s true, but l’Express had a scoop. Fadela Amara made a trip to Saint-Tropez during the month of July, for a studious weekend, as she describes it: "It was a working session with some very rich people who want to lend a hand in the dynamics of the project "Hope" for the suburbs. We’ll see the results next summer." In several months, then, after Easter and Mothers’ Day [2].

In fact, the secretary of state for urban policy is still in the "planning stages", as the newspaper headline assures us. She will even be playing back-up for Brice Hortefeux as number 2 on the list that the minister of the interior will be heading in elections in the Puy-de-Dôme. As for the suburbs, the
president will be taking care of those himself: at la Défense in the Hauts-de-Seine, and in Neuilly.

[1] la glandouille, or laziness, a term used by Amara to express her intention to afford "tolerance zero for goofing off" in the public service (translation suggested
by PPP ).